I stopped at my local Starbucks to pick up a quick cold brew and a little something to nibble, I’d not had lunch and figured a sous vide egg thing would be great to tide me over. Instead, I was surprised to see signs for new salads.

I was wooed by the idea of a Green Goddess Avocado salad, though I had no clue what the points were going to be.

What’s this Mercato thing?

Evidently, in April, Starbucks launched Mercato, a line of sandwiches, salads and snack boxes in Chicago. With a receptive audience, they rolled it out nation wide, with some items (Cubanos and Farmers Protein Boxes) hitting sooner then others.

The salads rolled out today in Seattle.

Craving a fresh salad, the Avocado Green Goddess sounded AMAZING, so of course they were out of it. My second choice offered to me was a hard boiled egg salad.

Thinking I was getting an egg salad sort of deal, I happily agreed. As I drove through the barista was so happy to have me take the salad off his hands, he gave me a brochure and a lunch bag. (Weird, and huge compared to the size of the salad.)

A Hard Boiled Side salad with grains

How was it?

The hard boiled eggs were just tossed on top of a bed of kinda limp spinach with a bed of grains on top. The tomatoes were not fresh but were instead roasted (great choice to keep them fresher longer actually) It was lightly dressed, and the grains were well cooked. The eggs themselves had a firmness to the white you see if an egg has been peeled, then held for a few hours before serving. The “grains” were brown rice. The eggs bumped up the calorie count and when I ran the numbers according to WW it was 11 SP. If you counted the eggs on their own, counted the vegetables as free, you get 4 SP , you have to figure a few points at least for the vinaigrette (and any other added oil). So 11 is the official count, but you might be able to fudge it and call it 9.

A second choice?

I found the Avocado Green Goddess salad at a different Starbucks, and while I wasn’t looking for lunch I got a closer look at the salad itself. The larger salads are very big, the greens looked fresh, and the grains looked well cooked. The avocado was distinct pieces of avocado, instead of being guacamole.

What did I like about it?

The ingredients list is amazingly clean. You can see it here on the Starbucks Site.
Basically, it’s eggs, spinach, tomatoes, brown rice, some seasoning, and vinaigrette. Not bad at all. It’s all food that can be easily recognized.It’s convenient, a stop at Starbucks for a mid-afternoon break could be improved with some vegetables.

What don’t I like about it?

The points counts are a little high, for most everything. You can find the nutritional information here:Count it for yourself and see what you come up with. Spot checking, the Green Goddess Salad is 21 SP. The Cauliflower Tabouli is 5 SP, and that’s mostly just vegetables with a little dressing. (a tbls of olive oil is about 5 SP, so maybe that’s the count. )

So many grains. While I’m not eating 100% paleo, it’d be nice to have some of these salads without the grains. A scoop of brown rice, quinoa or orzo may be a nice way to bulk it up.

Bottom line?Good in a pinch, but check the points before you take a bite.

I love cooking. I like firing up a frying pan and coming out with a healthy tasty dinner for my fiancee and myself. (Fiancee… that’s a new thing, very exciting) There are a number of kitchen tools I use that make it easier, that I’d love to share with you.

5. A Good Cast Iron Pan

The hot handle is a great benefit and either 10 inches or 12 inches is all you need for a normal size family of 2-4. It cooks up pancakes, sauteed vegetables, and with the right amount of heat will give you a great sear. Avoid acids at first, and clean it with only a little soap and hot water, and dry it right away.

4. A Coffee Grinder

Whether is creating a custom spice blend to rub onto steaks, breaking up cardamom pods for flavoring, or creating a little rice flour with a quick blend, this does everything but grind my morning coffee. I’m a huge fan of Bodum, and recommend this one, though you can often find it in other fun colors to match your kitchen.Bodum Bistro Electric Blade Coffee Grinder, Black

3. Tongs

Tong-ta-tong tong. That’s the noise we make every time we pick them up or hand them over to another person. I have ones that are silicone covered, like the ones up there, ones with metal end, big sturdy ones for grabbing meat off the grill, tiny ones for tossing salads in a bowl with dressing. I use them for fishing canning jars out of my Sous Vide bath, I toss them on the platter when serving, letting guests help them selves.

2. Canning Jars

We’re not just talking about hipster salads. (Though I’m not immune to making a good hipster salad)

We’re talking canning jars for mixing up salad dressings. Storing broths in, baking small cakes in, using in a water bath for egg custards, for drinking out of, taking homemade instant soups to work and.. making hipster salads. Canning jars are an awesome kitchen tool, not to be overrated. Keep a variety of sizes on hand. I recommend:

Also, consider learning to do pickling, fermenting and jam making. These are awesome versatile kitchen tools.

1. A Sous Vide tool

This could have easily been my Phillips Air Fryer or my Instant Pot. Heck, even my Traeger Grill is pretty useful. The number one slot belongs to my Sans Air Sous Vide though. Sous Vid is still new to the home cook and frankly looks a little alien. You heat up a water bath, seal meat into an airtight container (I use jars, freezer safe zip lock, or food saver bags.) Slip it into the water at the designated temperature, cook for the designated time, and fish it out when done. A final sear makes it ready for the table.

The magic of Sous Vide is that meat cooks at a specific temperature is very very had to overcook, and retains a moistness and cooked thoroughness that no other cooking method can really achieve. If you’re doubting the SousVide as my most important kitchen tool, consider this.

Yesterday, I turned the Sans Air Sous Vide on at 135degrees and cooked a pork tenderloin over 90 minutes. Fished it out and tossed it in the fridge. I changed the temperature to 160 degrees and dropped in 5lbs of chicken thighs. They were boneless , skinless and frozen. When the temperature came back to 160, I timed them for 3 hours, then fished them out. The chicken got chopped up, half of it got doused in some buffalo sauce for easy buffalo chicken salads this week (See recipe below). The rest is on hand to go into chicken tacos, burritos, stir fry, or chicken fried rice. (Paleomg has a great recipe here: http://paleomg.com/my-spin-on-chicken-fried-rice/)

The tenderloin got sliced up and sauteed for dinner. While the vegetables steamed and I chopped a salad it warmed up, remaining tender and tasty. Dinner was on the table, 15 minutes total from prep to plate. That’s why it tops my list of kitchen tools.

We are focused on the Weight Watchers lifestyle choices while eating whole foods. We eat lean meats, fresh vegetables, whole grains, full fat dairy. This means no support for support fat free/sugar free processed foods. Your food needs to have nutritional value. A sugar free brownie made with brownie mix and soda pop doesn’t have value.
Food substitutes like Halo Top are great, but we want to be able to eat ice cream in a non-Halo Top world. You need to know what a reasonable portion size looks like and how it fits into a healthy diet.

On March 25th, I kicked off a Whole Foods Challenge, with Menus and Recipes.

Spirlalized Italian Salad

This week’s Italian theme inspired me to give a Spiralized Italian Salad a try, from the cookbook Inspiralized. I’ve had a spiralizer forever. In fact, I now have 2 different models. The first being a plastic paderno option, the second being a metal one that hooks onto my kitchen aid.

The problem is, though I like the idea of a spiralized vegetables, replacing my spaghetti and other noodley options, it always seems like a hassle pulling out the spiralizer. With the kitchenaid option, I have a really bad habit of putting the blades in a safe spot in the kitchen, then not being able to find them when I go to use it again. (My kitchen, she is small and mighty and needs organization help.)

An Italian Theme

The other problem is, that spiralized noodles don’t always work out right. Sometimes they are too soggy, sometimes too much sauce. So I turned to the Spirlizer queen’s cookbook Inspiralized for inspiration. A quick flip through the book gave me the perfect inspiration for a Spiralized Italian Salad.

I was looking for a fresh take on Italian, something lighter and less hearty. Italian salads are often vegetable centered, so this was an easy choice.

It got rave reviews, and made an easy dinner served with air fryed chicken breast strips.

Next time? I’ll swap the shredded cheese for mozzarella balls, and consider adding chickpeas in for the salami to make it a vegetarian option. There was plenty left over after tonight, and it’ll get packed up for an easy lunch. Maybe if I’m lucky there will be enough to take on my flight to St Louis on Tuesday.

I think I’m ready to go back to New Orleans. A few years ago, Mike and I cruised out of the New Orleans port. We tacked on 3-4 days on the front of the trip so we could explore the city as a whole. I wanted more time in the city, because I grew up romanticizing it. In high school, I poured over Anne Rice’s Vampire novels, and steeped myself in knowledge about her and her life. As a teenager, New Orleans became my dream location. I was sure I was going to fall in love with the fair city, and that it would be hard to leave.

In a post-Katrina world, it was a little different then I expected. There was history, and nightlife as promised the sadness of Katrina recovery and the ubiquitous Bourbon Street nightlife invaded my day dreams.

A normal house in New Orleans

The Food of New Orleans

I’m ready to go back though. The food of New Orleans, is the stuff of dreams. Fresh seafood, french sauces and home style cooking mix together on your plate. One taste of crunchy fried chicken livers, or finger licking sticky cornbread covered in honey, and it’s true love.

There Chef Kevin taught us to make Pralines, Gumbo, Jambalaya and Bread Pudding.

Chef Kevin CooksJambalaya

We came away with full stomachs, a cookbook, pages of handwritten notes about the recipes. As I revisit them, I’ll share the recipes at AlmostDinner.com

The Culture of New Orleans

We went to Mardi Gras world and watched them build floats for the big parades, creating new floats from old, rebuilding from old ideas to new.

Mardi Gras world is in a warehouse down off the Mississippi river. It is a working art studio, storage facility and event venue. The Krewes of Mardi Gras don’t own their own floats, they only lease them from year to year , with Mardi Gras world’s artists helping recycle, restore and recreate the floats from year to year. For example, what is a hobbit hole this year, becomes Shrek’s hovel next year. The Krewes own the underlying trailers, which are worth up to 80K. Krewes have at least 14 floats in each parade, some holding as many as 40 people with their beads, plushies and other tokens. (The trailers even have bathrooms because float riders are often stuck on the floats upwards of 8 hours. )

We also visited a public art market at Frenchmen street. We got to see the works of local craftsman, and talk to people about what it meant to be an artist in a post-Katrina world.

Lots of recycled materials. The kind of work you’d see in the industrial areas of Seattle, but with a Louisiana Flair.

I’m a huge fan of variety at breakfast. I simply can’t eat the same thing over and over. Every morning i like to build breakfast, coming up with something new that strikes my fancy. Fresh choices, often seasonal, keep me on plan. I look forward to creating fun combinations, trying different things,making new flavors work together.

Breakfast is often steeped deeply in one flavor profile or another. If it’s sweet, it’s very very sweet. When it is savory, it tends to be very savory. My breakfast formulas contain one that actually straddles the two.

Why Build Breakfast?

Why am I building breakfast instead of cooking? I describe making breakfast as building because like a great building it starts with key components, a strong plan, and a solid foundation.

Mornings are often rushed, so a plan helps a lot. I start with a key base. For savory, that’s usually eggs, though grains and breads are also welcome. I pick a base, think about the flavor I want, ensure that I am taking advantage of items that are 0 SP. We’re talking plenty of vegetables and fruits, seasonings and flavors.

I balance out those vegetables with small pieces of extremely savory cheeses, or meats that pack a big punch for few points. A tbls of cheese may not seem like a lot, but when it’s a super savory cheddar, or a briny salty feta cheese it’s worth ever point.

(Think of chocolate, which provides more chocolate flavor, milk chocolate or a rich dark chocolate)

The Build Breakfast Formula

Here are just a few of the formulas I use to build breakfast everyday, and a couple of recipes that come from that. Give them a try and tell me what you think.

In my previous post, I explained about the Weight Watchers new meal delivery service. Details included cost, how to sign up and meal examples. It’s great to know the details, but if it tastes like cardboard or another over salted, under flavored freezer meal, why bother?

What I ordered.

When you sign up for delivery, Fresh Realms starts with 3 days worth of foods. That’s 3 breakfasts, lunches, Dinners and snacks. I switched it up immediately.

Snacks were overpriced, at $5 for a container of cantaloupe chunks or grapes was ridiculous. I picked the two snacks that looked interesting, a turkey roll-up and a bean and cheese roll up.

Some Breakfasts were dumb. Paying $6 for a bagel and fruit, also struck me as impracticle for how I eat. Other breakfasts caught my eye, I specifically added a pumpkin parfait to the cart, excited to try it.

Lunches & Dinners looked good. So I maximized my Lunches and Dinners. My goal was to have my box delivery cover a full week of lunches and dinner.

This meant I had:

Snacks:

Turkey and Cheese Roll-ups with Carrots and Fruit (8SP)
Bean and Cheese Roll-ups with Carrots and Fruit (6SP)

The Points? They don’t add up.

The program material was clear that the points wouldn’t be spot on, after all when fresh realm wrote up the nutritional information they don’t leave off the fruit and veg that WW gives you for free. So the number you scan with your barcode reader may be different then what’s printed on the top, and different then what you calculate on the back. It’s often just a point or two. Not a huge deal. With 1 exception.

The curious case of Pumpkin Parfait

Pumpkin Parfait.

I had really been excited for this dish. In fact I added an extra breakfast to make sure I could try this one. The first disappointment was the flavor. Despite having pumpkin, spices and maple syrup in the ingredient list, this was bland and sour, lumpy and not pleasant to eat. So I didn’t finish it.

The points on it are curious though. The package reads 6 SP. See:

In fact, if you scan the picture, it pops up with it on the official WW app.
Then if you flip it over and look at the ingredients?

It doesn’t match. The calorie stats on the back are more then double what you expect. If you use the manual calculator it tells you it it 20 SP. Sure WW leaves off the good stuff like fruit and veg. There isn’t 14 SP worth of pumpkin in this dish.
So clearly, there is reason to second guess and not trust that what you’re getting is going to match up with what you need to stay on plan. Eating 30 SP a day, I can’t afford a 20 SP breakfast dish that tastes bland and gross.

How did everything else taste?

Snacks:

Turkey and Cheese Roll-ups with Carrots and Fruit (8SP) One of my favorite items, loved the fruit, the turkey and cheese was tasty. Should be a lunch at 8SP.Bean and Cheese Roll-ups with Carrots and Fruit (6SP) Went bad before I could eat it.

Lunches:

Turkey, Sun Dried Tomatoes & Cream Cheese, with salad (8 SP) The sandwich was awesome. I’ll be making something similar. The salad was wilty, and didn’t appeal. The balsamic dressing didn’t bring much flavor. I tipped the chickpeas into the soup and left the rest.
Market Style Salad with Chicken (2 SP) Went bad before I could eat it.
Island Salad with Chicken (6 SP) Was good. Not amazing, not terrible. I didn’t like the croutons but the rest was good.
Roasted Vegetable Soup (0 SP) Was good. Tasted like a bowl of pizza. I tipped the chickpeas into it from the turkey sandwich meal and that made it even better.

Dinner:

Grilled Salmon with Citrus Butter (8 SP)Went bad before I could eat it.Curried Chicken over Jasmine Rice with Roasted (4 SP)Went bad before I could eat it.Chili Garlic Shrimp Stir Fry (4 SP)Went bad before I could eat it.
Pork and Pintos Enchilada Casserole (8 SP) Good! I liked this. I would spend a few SP on cheese or sour cream to make it better, but it was a solid choice.
Orecchiette with Bacon and Ricotta (10 SP) Good! I wanted more veg, but beyond that this was tasty and reheated well.
Chicken Thigh Meat with Greens, Sweet Potato (6 SP) Gross. The greens were kale stems again, and fennel. The chicken thighs were tough, gritty, fatty lumps. Never again.

The Bottom Line:

I won’t be ordering again. It’s too expensive, and unreliable to have to go out mid week to get more food. I also had a week where the delivery didn’t come at all, because of a winter storm in Memphis. (The box was traveling from Sacramento to Seattle, tell me how Memphis fits in, it got as far as Oregon before the delivery was scrubbed)

I also don’t trust the points. If I want to use this to stay on plan, I expect to be able to trust point counts. It’d be different if it was simply filling where you were just focused on what was in the food and the portion size you were eating.

Some folks have seen success in freezing the meals when they come in and reheating them from frozen. If I’m ordering something called Fresh Realm, I don’t expect to have freezer meals.

Questions? Please reach out to me via comments!

All of the pictures

Curious about what something looked like? Here are all the pictures I took for this.

]]>http://seattlejo.com/?feed=rss2&p=11400PreFab Food: Weight Watchers Meal Delivery Detailshttp://seattlejo.com/?p=1142
http://seattlejo.com/?p=1142#respondSat, 28 Jan 2017 22:01:41 +0000http://seattlejo.com/?p=1142What happens when you are on Weight Watchers and you are a food blogger?

You try all kinds of interesting foods. That means you build meal plans, take lots of pictures and check the points on everything. You sample Weight Watchers foods, packaged snacks and frozen meals. When you make something awesome, you run the points on it. Just to see how good or bad it is.

Sometimes it means giving up the cooking for a week entirely to try out a new service.

What if Weight Watchers delivered meals to your door?

Prefab meal options are big in the marketplace these days. This includes box meal services like Plated and Blue Apron, as well as full meal delivery like Freshly. It’s a no brainer for adding diversity to their portfolio of products for sale. After all, people are busier, but want to eat healthier. Staying on program is important.

The problem with most weight loss programs who offer food, is that the food is crap. It’s freeze dried/dehydrated, too much sodium, not enough flavor. There is little variety, and it’s just dull. Sorry Nutrisystems, you know it’s true.

I’m in a test area, on the West Coast. This service is finding it’s legs, and I assume if it’s successful they’ll be rolling it out to the rest of the world.

How this works

Before a giant food box arrives to your house, you have to jump through a few hoops.

Be in a test area. If you aren’t on the West Coast, you are out of luck for now.

Buy a Voucher from your meeting room or meeting leader. This cost me $88.
The voucher allows you to sign up on the website, and allows you to pick out the first 12 meals.

Sign up on the website. You’ll put your information in, and look at the meals that are offered.(More on that soon)

Pick extra meals. 12 meals is the minimum, but comes with $10 in shipping. If you get to 16 meals, shipping is free!

Pick a Delivery Date. My choices were Thursday or Saturday. I picked Saturday.

Weight for food to arrive! You’ll get an email when the meals ship and when they arrive. Shipping takes a couple days, but the magic “vessel” keeps them fresh.

Eat and Enjoy! This is the easiest part.

Meal Cost and Selections

Weight Watchers and their partner Fresh Realm offer a selection of Breakfasts, Lunches and Dinners.

Snacks are $5, Breakfasts are $6, Lunches are $7, Dinners are $8.

These are some of the selections I picked for the first delivery.

But what’s it look like delivered?

Food comes in individual packages, listing what the ingredients are. The packages are microwave safe, but not oven safe. Most of the packages just a single compartment, though a few like the breakfast sandwich and fruit separate the fruit out on it’s own.

Points are listed on the front, along with a bar code you can scan. A full ingredient list is on the back.

A Closer Look:

It’s a New Era of Food Delivery

But it’s not perfect. In my next post, I’ll share what I ordered, what I ate and what I thought of the service.